WEBVTT - Haunted 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:03.640 You are about to and to Vault thirteen once who 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:07.520 are transport vehicle arrives at the facility. Please continue moving 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:11.000 forward at all times, do not touch any word or anything. 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.040 And you know, Smoothie, please enjoy your stay involves thirteen. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.760 Welcome to the stuff of life. I'm your host, Julie Douglas. 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.319 In the last episode, we looked at desperation, and in 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.480 this episode we walk through the grotesque ery of fear 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.560 that drives desperation. To that end, we step into three 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:41.560 vaults of the imagination, all constructed from myth and all 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:49.000 dealing with one of our worst fears, death m h. 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:55.280 The first of all, it contains an archive of a 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.760 psy ops mission in Vietnam that you deeply held cultural 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:04.240 beliefs about the dead to wage psychological warfare. The second vault, 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:08.360 a haunted attraction, contains all the ingredients to tap into 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.160 a kind of ancient cave of fears. How's it going, 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:16.080 Holly good? Those twisty rooms and the vortex room, they 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.720 genuinely jack with your equilibrium, But you feel like your 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:21.959 body is made, like there's a force that's working on 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.200 your body, like I'm falling to the left or rights 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:35.959 we're talking primal mythology here, the idea of a thinning 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.119 of the veil between two worlds, life and death. It's 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.080 fascinating if you think about it. Each Halloween we put 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:47.160 on a pageant of them a cob we pay homaged ghosts, ghouls, 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:49.760 and the grim Reaper. We even go so far as 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.320 to submit ourselves to a haunted house, walking through a 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.600 maze of horrors and mock sacrifices of our souls. There's 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.480 a lot of elements tied to going into a hunted house. 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:03.960 In many ways, it's a ride of passage. It's the 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.440 hero's journey. It's the going into the unknown and showing 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.920 that you're grown up and that you're you're an adult 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:16.520 and you're ready to take these things on. In the 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:22.000 third vault, we enter the immersive theater production democracy. You 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:25.280 may agree with me that what people find the most 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:33.160 stridening debate is politics. But first let's talk about the 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:37.640 sound of fear, the wonderland of symbols embedded in the 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:44.640 simplest of tones. What does this sound mean to you? 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.520 It could be a leaky faucet, but dig a bit deeper. 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.160 Think of a water droplet separated from its source, isolated, 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:57.680 dripping into an empty bowl, displaced apart from the whole. 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:04.320 These quiet moments, sound is amplified, and so is emotion 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.320 because each noise we've ever heard has been coded into 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.040 our brains as a symbol of some larger pattern, a 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:16.520 pattern that tells a story. Now with that in mind, 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:20.679 imagine it's nineteen seventy and you're a Viet Cong soldier 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.400 making your way through the jungle in the middle of 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:35.640 a night when you hear this. What you're hearing is 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:38.400 essentially a haunted house in the middle of a jungle. 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.240 The Special Operations Group in the U. S. Army UM 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:46.400 wired up a jungle area outside of an American firebase 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.880 with UM with sound speakers, and one night, it was 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.400 in the early nineteen in the dead of night, began 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:59.320 playing this kind of supernatural ghost show over these speakers, 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:04.200 and the idea to terrify UM the Viet Cong infiltrators 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.480 that had taken up positions in that forest. Oh good. 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.920 I'm Nathan Mallett, founder and editor of Military History Now 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:20.599 dot com. Military History Now catalogs the strange, offbeat in 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.200 lesser known aspects of military history, all the stuff that 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:28.520 really fascinates Nathan like ghost Heap number ten from the 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.200 Vietnam War. The grunts of the wheels of the Green 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:34.200 Machine the name they give the military. The Green Machine 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.279 is coming from America with flesh on it. Today is 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.640 the day for Utility or Wonderland of heroes and slogans. 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:43.880 In the Green Machine, a grunt doesn't seek out the enemy. 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.719 He goes hunting. The Green Machine plays games like Wondering Soul. 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.120 Wandering Soul is a tape that has been put out 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.360 by the Psychological Operations Battalion and ben wa is used 0:04:55.360 --> 0:05:00.400 by the operating divisions and separate brigades broadcast a rally 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.360 appeal to the bigcom The tape itself is rather a 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:08.120 weird one with the funeral dirge music in the background 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.200 and they flatter talking to his children saying he's died 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.080 on the battlefield and he's trying to encourage his comrades 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.960 and the rallying joined the just caude. It kind of 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:20.680 reminded me of an episode of Gilligan's Island. Um remember 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:23.400 the old TV series from the sixties. There were some 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:27.200 spies that wanted to chase the castaways off the island, 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:31.400 so they dressed up in white sheets and tried to 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:46.039 make the castaways believe that the island was haunted. Somebody, 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:48.880 I think, and maybe the Pentagon saw that episode and 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.960 thought this might work in Vietnam. But this wasn't the 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.479 first time the US military engaged in the theater of war. 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:01.680 They did borrow some of this idea that these types 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.560 of tactics, so from a from a group in World 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.280 War Two known as the Ghost Army. They used a 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.640 lot of sort of audio equipment and loud speakers to 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.880 fool the Germans post Normandy invasion Europe. So they would 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:17.040 they play over the loudspeakers um the sound of like 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:21.400 one Sherman tanks rolling through the forest. So the Germans 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.320 opposite the American lines would think that there was a 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.480 massive sort of armored attack waiting to be unleashed on them, 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.200 and they would evacuate the area, and in reality that 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.120 the American lines were, you know, probably thinly defended. And 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.479 so I think ghost Tape was kind of borrowing from 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:41.120 that sort of special operation psychological operations campaign of the 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:43.719 Second World War, and they brought it to Vietnam, but 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:45.960 they sort of they added a sort of the supernatural 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.240 element to it. And Ghost Team Number ten. American forces 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:52.599 were trying to tap into deeply held cultural ideas about 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.560 life and death of the Vietnamese people worshiped the souls 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.039 of their ancestors, but this wandering soul is very different. 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.039 It was seved in an echo chamber by the U. S. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.120 Army and as broadcast from a helicopter of a jungle. 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.680 Some of the sounds are of the poet I guess, 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:17.200 presumably Vietcong fighters who had been killed earlier, and they 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:19.320 were sort of warning their comrades, you know, you're in 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:21.840 a lost cause. This is terrible. Don't let what happened 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:24.960 to me happen to you. Go home while you still can. 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.960 And then interlaced with all of this is the sounds 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:33.360 of children calling for their their daddies and and and 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:38.560 wives or widows weeping, and just sort of gongs banging 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:40.920 and things like that. But it's all sort of echoe 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:51.320 and swirly and kind of just otherworldly. Even if the 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.160 Vietcong didn't believe that there were in fact ghosts in 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.240 the jungle with them, even if they realized they were, 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:57.760 sort of this was part of a kind of a 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.200 supernatural horror show being put on by the Americans. Just 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.200 the sounds and the message, it's just it's just more 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.360 than a little eerie. So I think even if it 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.000 didn't have the full impact, I think it was probably 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.120 unpleasant to be sitting, you know, in the dark, listening 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:20.200 to these sounds. Here's the thing. It was late in 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:22.960 the war, and the US was up for trying anything 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.240 that might move the needle in their favor. It was 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.560 during the period when they were drawing their forces back 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.400 out of Southeast Asia, so they were having to do, 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:33.760 you know, more with less, and they were trying to 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:36.000 hand the fighting over to the Vietnamese. Was a big 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:38.760 part of the US effort in Southeast Asia. UM, And 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.160 I think it might have been sort of the sort 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.360 of an outgrowth of that idea of trying to win 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.320 your friends, you know, win over the hearts and minds 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:50.120 of the South Vietnamese, but also try to demoralize the enemy. Um. 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:52.480 That was a big part of of the American effort 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:57.000 in Southeast Asia. How effective was the operation, It's hard 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.920 to know. Some accounts say that Ghost Tape number ten 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:04.280 drew aggressive fire rather than retreat. And then there's the 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.800 nearby villagers who woke to a chilling cacophony of music 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:12.080 and voices, not exactly something that would win hearts and minds. 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:17.120 We think we know about war and fear, and then 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:20.439 a footnote to history like ghost Heap number ten surfaces 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:24.600 on a site like Military History Now, and it reframes everything. 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.480 I just wanted to tell the stories about military history 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:36.959 that don't get reported. With all the real and imagined 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.600 terrors in this world, why would we willingly seek out 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:44.680 opportunities to walk into fear, to knowingly give ourselves over 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:50.959 to psychological warfare? Yep, we are talking about a haunted house. 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:06.600 Talk are are randomly demons whose wars I'm very sure 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:12.440 we'll be talking. Most people come to a hommed house 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:14.760 to be scared, to be entertained, to have a great time. 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.839 But there are people who get the deeper meanings. They 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:19.760 get the roots of things, the roots of Halloween. They 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:27.000 can see the references that's been Armstrong of another world. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:30.200 In Atlanta, Georgia, it's one of the most popular Halloween 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.320 attractions in the city, in part because of Ben's commitment 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:37.839 to the idea of the hero's journey, something very exciting 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:42.000 to go into a scary environment, to almost be struggling 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.080 with the savage beast in a way to have that 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:47.560 adrenaline surge, but yet to know that you're safe. Every 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:50.760 day we suffer bursts of a journal and from anger 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:54.640 in our cubicle, from traffic on the road, and our 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.720 entire way we deal with this is repression. We just 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.559 repressed it because in our culture it's not appropriate to 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.000 scream and yell and go crazy. But you can come 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.320 to a place like a horned attraction and you can 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:07.960 let it all out. You can scream and yell, and 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:14.600 it's such a release. It's so much fun. And I 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:18.480 often think the Harnhou's actors are playing the role of 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:20.840 like a predator. It's like you're a hunter, you know. 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.559 So they have the fun of stalking prey, if you will, 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.800 stalking the patrons and scaring them. So it's all very 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:30.080 deep when you come and you really think about it. 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.959 One of another World's big inspirations is HP Lovecraft, the 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.439 early science fiction and horror author who plumbed the depths 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.720 of primordial ancient evil, the kind of evil that's deeper 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:50.080 and more abiding than humans can ever understand. I felt 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.920 a wave of tripe to tangible as a draft from 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:58.640 the tomb. It seems humpow like, like the spawn of 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:03.800 another dimension, like something only partly of mankind, linked to 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.960 black gulfs, beyond all spheres of false the matter, space 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:14.120 and time. To that end, every square inch of nether 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.400 world is layered in objects that recall this kind of 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:23.520 existential horror. It's like a museum of nightmare images, and 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:26.840 it's world building at its finest. It preys on all 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:31.040 the senses, particularly the vibrations that wend their way into 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:34.000 your ears. The cool thing about a hunt an ounce 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:36.840 that a hunt anounced has over other forms of entertainment 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.959 is it has the tactile element because you're walking through it. 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:45.360 And it also has smell because you don't really use 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:49.760 taste much, but you know. But by far it's visual 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.079 and sound. I mean, those are the elements. You you 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:56.240 see the monster, and you hear the monster, and the 0:12:56.320 --> 0:13:00.000 monster has a deep, guttural, bassy sound in the case 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.120 eating size. Sometimes you don't see the monster, you just 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:06.120 hear it, and the sound matters. So those two things 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.360 they really tied together to create the complete package to 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:15.440 put someone into a new world. We have a scene 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:19.360 in the attraction where you see a ghost projected on 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.560 a It's basically a screen that picks out the lights. 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:24.800 You can see right through it. You see the back wall, 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.400 and as the ghost comes out, you know, the floorboards 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.720 start cracking and snapping, and you hear the actual physical 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:41.080 sounds of real wood moving. But there's a rumbling and 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.000 what happens. We have a thing called a butt kicker, 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.480 and a butt kicker is a type of speaker, But 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:49.400 what it is, it's a huge metal enclosure with a 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:51.800 magnet that moves much like a speaker does, you know, 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.640 in a cone, but it actually creates a physical vibration, 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:58.080 so the entire floor vibrates to the sound. So you 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.720 hear the sound of this roaring and a floor is 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.160 shaking and you're watching the you know, the things crack 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.400 and move towards you, and you're seeing this ghost and 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:08.960 the whole thing is is very unreal, and it's taking 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:18.439 sound and actually making it physical. You feel that then 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:20.360 takes us on a tour of the attraction so we 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:26.520 can experience the assault on our senses for ourselves. Now 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:29.160 we're walking through the spider room with the spider sacks 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:34.080 hanging down. I said, glad, the lights are still on 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:40.040 a little bit good nostration. You're gonna grab your walk out, 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:52.080 throwing you very little free foot wide opening fog, and 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.320 just when you think the worst is past you, that 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:57.760 you've cleared the big hurdle, another round of sound waves 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:06.040 hits you. This act. They sometimes have step pads and 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:12.920 they can step on the creative sound unexpected air blasts. 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.160 Every part of the attraction is carefully orchestrated, down to 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.200 the moment that you enter the parking lot and you 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.640 queue up in line. This is when an actor known 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:27.800 as a slider comes creaming towards you, sliding on his knees, 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:31.640 dragging metal tipped gloves over the concrete to create a 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:39.880 trail of sparks. So you come here. You hear screams 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:41.600 in the parking lot of people being scared. You hear 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.360 the sliders scraping steel on the concrete, which also your 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:50.840 happy fun. I was looking in the love late ron 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:57.440 light when my eye sight. We actually choose to make 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:01.840 the outdoor more festive and feeling. Um. We've done everything 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.400 over the years to make it sound creepy, but what 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:09.360 we like better now is we play like Halloween songs. 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:13.120 If you will, you know Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.640 or you know the Monster Mash, or just all kinds 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.040 of kookie fun songs to create a more of a 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.760 festival street atmosphere. Because a good haunted attraction rides the 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.800 razor's edge between Halloween on one side and horror on 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.920 the other. Halloween is all the good, fun, happy moments. 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.240 You know, too far to Halloween, it becomes too kitty, 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.640 too far into horror. Horror is the thrills, excitement, but 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.800 too far into horror becomes too morbid, too nasty. So 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:47.360 a good attraction, my mind, rides the middle line. But 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:49.920 then the closer you get into the interior of the attraction, 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:52.280 the more the sound becomes real. I'm about to go 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.120 into this as we like to call it, it's the 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.560 click click click of the roller coaster going up, preparing 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.720 you for the drop. Once you get into this room, 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:04.360 it's darker, it's more moody. You know, there's different announces 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.000 that you're seeing creepy things. But the fun part is stopping. 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.480 Now you're about to go. You're about to enter that 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:18.560 ancient cave. You're about to face your fears. That also 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:22.440 trains the staff and group psychology. They talk about archetypes 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.639 and the behaviors that go along with them. So you 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.920 know that stoic haunted house expert, Well, that person is 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:33.400 usually looking for minute details while the hero was up, 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:36.840 but under the cover of darkness and terror, that hero 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:39.960 may just turn out to be the person who sacrifices 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.320 someone from the group, shoving them out in front to 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.879 save himself. They also talk about things like fear of clowns, 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.159 fear of darkness, the idea that the deepest fear, the 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.240 root fear, is the unknown. Why are you afraid of 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.320 darkness because you don't know what's in it? Why are 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.920 you afraid of clowns because you don't know the intention 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:03.440 the person is masked. It's fear of the unknown? What's 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:10.879 out there? There's something out there I don't understand. And 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.120 this way another world creates a physical maze to work 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.080 out the mental ones that we run through in our 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:21.000 minds when it comes to the unknown. But what happens 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.360 when you enter a haunted house that seizes on fears 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:28.760 that are all too real in a world of endless 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:38.639 apocalyptic realities, unbeh of nightmares masquerading a salvation u this 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:42.200 fall one event will perfectly capture the mood of our 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:47.399 current collective imagination. They're bringing drugs, creative time and artist 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.960 Pedro reys invite you to experience the haunted house that 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:58.879 already exists in our minds. Will be left behind. Democracy 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:07.160 a house, a political horror that's from democracy and immersive 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.760 theater play put on in the fall of two thousand 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:14.359 and sixteen by artist Pedro Reyes. We were working working 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:19.159 in the Brooklyn Army Terminal, which is a massive concrete 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:24.920 structure was built for the First World War, and this 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:27.800 was a place where bombs and all the kind of 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:32.840 uh weapons were made for the first time Second World Wars, 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:37.400 and and it still feels like a military zone. As 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.879 soon as audience members showed up at the terminal, they 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.600 were placed front and center in the plays action. You 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:48.360 climbed in his van, and his van and the chauffeur 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:53.760 won't talk to you. He's playing the right wing white 0:19:54.000 --> 0:20:01.000 supremacist radio. Then suddenly this van is stopped by the police. 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.520 This is an army terminal. We don't give towards it 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.680 unless you have a government issued ide. You and everybody 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:09.040 in this vehicle is now trespassing. I'm gonna have to 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.920 detain everybody needs vehicle. Who your vehicle to the right 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:21.159 right now? Okay, but you're not sure where there is 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.840 the side of the play or not, because they tell 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:29.080 you that it was a restricted area, that the stard 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.359 shouldn't be going in these parts, that this is a 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.760 military sounded to the working all the way down the 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:47.840 quick let's go where they're treated brutally by these actors, 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:57.000 which are addressed as riot police. Inside the buildings, warrens 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:01.280 of rooms presented psychological minefields, and in one of them, 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.800 the opioid epidemic taking hold in the US was explored 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:11.439 with an actor begging for help. I'm gone, I need 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:14.119 to perfectly care im not able. Then she tries to 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:21.280 persuade people from the audience who helped her to get 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.400 fields from the doctor because the doctor won't give her 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.720 any more guilt. She's very curious because you know, like 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:32.200 the people in the audience were refusing to help her. 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.639 The audience is also in character. It was very interesting 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:48.000 to see the psychological dynamics and this way democracy was 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:52.400 very much a social experiment. The audience reflected our society's 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:56.240 judgment of others and how we tend to regard addiction 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:02.439 as a moral failure. Another social experiment occurred in a 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:06.359 boardroom of a fictitious company, and it required participants to 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:09.879 either save the jobs of five thousand people or fire 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.879 them and claim a one million dollar bonus package. And 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:17.160 if you decide to take the package, you take the list. 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.080 If you take the list, you are right and you 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:25.520 are against at a very fancy party. And if you 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.639 decided to save the workers, you take of the sairs 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:34.080 and and then you're the health You're given an apron 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:38.000 and you have to their drinks to the other gifts. 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:41.919 In a school room of the future, Rais envisioned a 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:46.680 classroom with no teachers, just screens with educational avatar who 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:51.400 lectured a kind of revisionist history. And in another room 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:54.560 there was a future where there were no parks, just 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:59.520 a headset outfitted in virtual reality. And you see the 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:07.080 reach park in in through the VR ships because there's 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:10.679 no more facts in the future. And and this is 0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:13.159 something that Trump is doing, you know, like Trump is 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:17.560 in terms wants to turn natural parks into places where 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:20.479 they can be drilling or they can be tracking or whatever. 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:25.840 That seemed like a sci fi scenario three months ago, 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:29.560 and now it's happening. Today I'm signing a new executive 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:34.280 order to end another egregious abuse of federal power. The 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:38.000 order would review the status of twenty four national monuments 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:42.840 created over the past twenty years. Major sites in the West, 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:47.640 including the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, are under review. 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:51.600 The half million hecked Are protected area is home to 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:56.639 Native Americans who oppose possible changes. Rant says that all 0:23:56.680 --> 0:23:59.679 of these issues are political. It's the parsing out of 0:23:59.680 --> 0:24:02.960 what's private public, and what's a shared world, the role 0:24:03.040 --> 0:24:05.160 that we all get to decide we want to live in, 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:09.320 and in part that was the impetus for democracy. Democracy 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:13.240 is a kind of very fragile process. When the countries 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:19.080 are becoming less rich, people tend to become more conservative. 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:25.720 They want an easy fix. It's a it's a psychological 0:24:25.760 --> 0:24:28.680 phenomena that you want to have the fear of a 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:33.960 father who's gonna come and and fix things. That allows 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:40.080 often for the arrival of a siren that will, you know, 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:43.560 like just take advantage of the situation and school everybody. 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:46.560 So that's what happened in the United States, what has 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:51.080 happened in many other countries also, So it's a global phenomena, 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.960 which leads to the one problem with democracy as supposed 0:24:55.960 --> 0:24:59.560 to a hunt of house where you exit and then 0:24:59.640 --> 0:25:04.080 you know so here you actually the countercasto, and your 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:08.960 still in the middle of the color house that studies 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:17.920 unfolding ariety every way. Democracy has disappeared in several other 0:25:18.000 --> 0:25:23.240 great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, 0:25:23.920 --> 0:25:28.800 but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, 0:25:28.800 --> 0:25:34.800 of government confusion, government weakness. Finally, in desperation, they chose 0:25:34.840 --> 0:25:41.120 to sacrifice liberty. Ultimately, democracy is a reminder things don't 0:25:41.160 --> 0:25:44.080 change by itself, but you have to take part in 0:25:44.160 --> 0:25:48.120 the process. We in America know that our own democratic 0:25:48.160 --> 0:25:52.879 institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in 0:25:53.000 --> 0:25:57.439 order to preserve them, we need to act together to 0:25:57.560 --> 0:26:01.400 meet the problems of the nation boldly, and to prove 0:26:01.560 --> 0:26:05.359 the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the 0:26:05.440 --> 0:26:21.640 task of protecting the security of the people. My eight 0:26:21.680 --> 0:26:25.320 year old hates October. At every turn she sees symbols 0:26:25.359 --> 0:26:30.320 of mortality, skeletons, coffins, and mummies, and every few days 0:26:30.440 --> 0:26:33.159 she tells me she doesn't want to die, and my 0:26:33.200 --> 0:26:36.280 heart breaks a little because there's nothing I can do 0:26:36.480 --> 0:26:42.200 to change the equation of existence. Instead, I try to 0:26:42.240 --> 0:26:47.280 explain that Halloween, haunted houses, horror movies, and even our 0:26:47.320 --> 0:26:51.960 worst fears repeated on nightly news broadcasts, those are just 0:26:52.080 --> 0:26:56.640 psy ops missions in reverse. I explained that we take 0:26:56.720 --> 0:26:59.560 this fear that wears us down and we confront it 0:27:00.000 --> 0:27:03.960 in its ultimate form, deaf, and in this way we 0:27:04.000 --> 0:27:07.840 always find our way back to life. No doubt that 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:10.720 when I tell my daughter this, I'm also consoling myself, 0:27:11.320 --> 0:27:14.960 telling myself that staring down the grotesqueries of life is 0:27:15.040 --> 0:27:17.760 part of the hero's journey to come out on the 0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:24.600 other side, battled and bruised, but better for it. And 0:27:24.680 --> 0:27:27.280 the next episode we'll look at how we are all 0:27:27.440 --> 0:27:32.800 inextricably wired together. We're all connected in a very deep way, 0:27:33.040 --> 0:27:37.160 and yet we all forget that. Thank you to Nathan 0:27:37.160 --> 0:27:39.560 Mallett for walking us through the psy Ops mission Ghost 0:27:39.600 --> 0:27:42.440 Tape number ten. You can find more of Nathan's research 0:27:42.520 --> 0:27:46.159 on military history. Now Many things to Creative Time and 0:27:46.200 --> 0:27:50.400 Pedro raise for discussing democracy with us. You can see 0:27:50.400 --> 0:27:54.040 more of Pedro's work at pedro rays dot com. And 0:27:54.080 --> 0:27:56.320 thank you to Ben Armstrong for pulling back the curtain 0:27:56.359 --> 0:27:59.000 on the fear machine that is nether World, and to 0:27:59.080 --> 0:28:01.960 Holly Fry of stuff you missed in history class, thank 0:28:02.000 --> 0:28:06.679 you for holding my hand through a nether World. Stuff 0:28:06.680 --> 0:28:09.000 of Life is written an executive produced by me Julie 0:28:09.040 --> 0:28:12.840 Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown. Editorial oversight is 0:28:12.880 --> 0:28:16.120